Chapter 10 - The Other Side.

=PART-1

Kol had started studying the codex of life after the situation in his country had stabilized.

When nothing productive happens and you look back at the lost time, it always seems like it passed rather hurriedly. After three decades Kol finally decided to study, The Other Side.

The Other Side was a supernatural dimension where the spirits of the dead supernatural beings resided in a state of purgatory or limbo. It was created by Qetsiyah.

Qetsiyah was engaged to another warlock, Silas, with whom she was madly in love. At his request, Qetsiyah concocted an immortality elixir, using her self created immortality spell. She had planned to share it with Silas as a part of their wedding ceremony.

However, Silas betrayed her by cheating on her. Qetsiyah discovered that Silas was madly in love with her handmaiden Amara and he even consumed the immortality elixir alongside her.

Qetsiyah was very distraught that Silas had betrayed her and had taken the elixir meant for the two of them, with Amara instead. She retaliated by kidnapping Amara and using her eternal and indestructible body as an anchor to bind the spell that created the Other Side. This way, Amara would feel all the painful final moments of every single dead supernatural being, who would pass on to The Other Side. This anchor was like a gate between the real world and the dimension of The Other Side.

Qetsiyah then imprisoned Silas, somewhere deep within a remote cave on the world's most obscure, desolate and remote island, along with the cure to his immortality. She believed that Silas would eventually take the cure and die as a mortal, thus joining her on The Other Side.

Qetsiyah was then murdered by her fellow witches and passed on to the other side, but it had been more than a thousand years since this story took place but Silas had never taken the cure, and after more than a thousand years of wait in a cold, dark prison dimension, created by herself, Qetsiyah's mental state would not be stable and Kol was well aware of that.

=PART-2

Kol had converted the entire bas.e.m.e.nt of his manor into a large magic laboratory. Different areas were dedicated to conduct different experiments. Sometimes he called witches, to help in some experiments, but most of the time no one else besides himself and Astrid was allowed to enter here.

Especially, for the experiments for studying The Other Side, Kol would never call any other witch. That would be foolish, considering that most of them practiced spirit magic.

The Spirits were the totality of all non-living witches who inhabited the Other Side. Spirit Magic is a powerful form of witchcraft that called upon the aid of the "The Spirits".

The Spirits are known to possess an ethereal field of collective knowledge that can be accessed by any witch who calls upon their assistance. It could be considered as a magical internet.

When they are called upon, the spirits act as a binding force between mana drawn from nature, and the reality. The witches of this world considered the spirits as a binding force between the forces of nature and the elements of the earth. It basically means that the witches first call upon the spirits using their own magic and then spirits aid the witches in doing the spell, using the mana drawn from nature.

=PART-3

Kol had drawn a magic formation in a room closed from all sides. Even the door could only be accessed by Kol alone and it would disappear as soon as Kol stepped in, or out.

The magic formation was used to track the souls of the dead supernatural beings, who would die on top of the formation. It was created to calculate the dimensional coordinates of The Other Side.

Kol could enter The Other Side without passing through the anchor if he calculated the exact coordinates. The anchor was nothing more than a gate and with Kol's magic and omega effect, it was not needed. Hence, there was no need to find the anchor at all.

At this point, Kol had made a few enemies, including an out of the town small werewolf pack, a group of vampires who did not like to follow the rules and some self-righteous, conservative witches.

When these offenders were captured, Kol usually never killed them. He made good use of them in his experiments instead.

If they were normal human beings, then he first turned them into vampires, hence making them supernatural, and then killed them. If they were already supernatural, then he just killed them on top of his newly created formation. Either way, their souls would then be used as a tracking beacon by the formation, to find the coordinates of The Other Side.

Kol made small changes in the formation after every attempt and finally managed to find the exact dimensional coordinates after three years. Now, he was ready to travel.

=PART-4

On a nice sunny morning, Kol and Astrid were standing in the garden. He had already told her where he was going and the gardener, who would usually be taking care of the garden in the morning, was allowed to leave for the day.

After a short kiss and a brief goodbye, Kol started doing hand signs. A few seconds later, a golden magic circle manifested in front of his raised right hand.

Kol then raised his other hand and the palm of his left hand faced the magic circle. He then released his omega effect.

After a few seconds, a loud "BOOM" sounded, as if an explosion had occurred, a tyrannical force was released from the front of the magic circle and a red vortex manifested itself. It was a Boomtube projection.

Since there was no mother box here to create a Boomtube device for the Boomtube projection, Kol used a magic circle that would concentrate the energy from his own omega effect to create a targeted Boomtube projection.

After the portal had been released, Kol turned around and gave a faint smile to Astrid, and then stepped inside the Boomtube projection after uttering a short, "See ya!".

=PART-5

Kol found himself a few hundred meters away from his previous position. The scenery here looked much the same. It was like entering the mirror dimension, however, it felt like all the colors in the world had somewhat faded.

Kol knew that he was currently in a different dimension. He could feel it. This place was a lot gloomier than the real world and the scenery around was somewhat colorless. A depressing feeling was coming from all sides as if someone had died.

Kol walked around a bit and found Astrid. She was sitting in the garden after he had gone. He tried to talk to her and touch her, but nothing worked. It was like she could not see him at all.

Kol then walked away and started looking around. He hoped to find some dead souls to ask about the situation in this dimension.

After a while of wandering around and finding nothing helpful, Kol decided to go to a cemetery to find some dead souls. If that did not work, he would create a small formation that would track dead souls for him, or he could simply look around in the state of astral projection.

------------Scene -Kol Meeting Esther.

As Kol started walking towards the cemetery, he heard a voice behind him.

"Kol! Is that you?" It was a women's voice. Somewhat sad and unsure.

Kol was startled. He turned around and then, he was shocked.

The person who just spoke to him was Esther. She had tears in her eyes and looked very sad, but angry.

Kol took a deep breath and calmed himself down as he replied, "Mother! What are you doing here? Only the dead can come here. Did you not use the immortality spell on yourself?".

Hearing this, Esther looked down and started to reminiscence with a sad face. After her death, she had to watch every single life her children took and feel the pain of every victim. This was the way the spirits were punishing her for her actions for disrupting the balance of nature.

It had only been more than a century and Esther had no plans to kill her own children yet. She only felt regret for her actions and drowned herself in sadness and grief as her children turned into monsters. She was looking for a way to make amends.

Esther suddenly looked up after a couple of seconds and wiped her tears as she spoke, "Kol! I don't know how you came here, but you shouldn't be here. This is not the place where the living should be.".

Kol interrupted before she could speak any further, "Mother! I know the dangers of this place. Let us go and sit down somewhere. I need you to tell me what happened after I left, and most importantly, how did you die?"

After a little persuasion, Esther and Kol sat down in the grass field in the garden as Esther recounted the events that took place after Kol and Astrid had left.

It was much the same as the original. After Kol had left, Mikael took advantage of the village's late-night hunting celebration and forced Esther to seal Niklaus's werewolf side. Esther was then killed by Niklaus, who put all the blame on Mikael and then fled to the old world with all his siblings when Mikael had gone to slaughter a werewolf village.

The only difference was, that this time, she was killed during the process of sealing Niklaus's werewolf side. As Elijah was not there to help Mikael hold down Niklaus, in his final attempt to flee, Niklaus chose to transform into his wolf form and accidentally killed Esther in that state.

Niklaus was stronger than Mikael in his werewolf form. Unfortunately, Esther had already sealed his werewolf side before her death and it was the last time he would ever transform.

After listening to her whole story, Kol went into contemplation. Sure enough, time indeed had inertia and it would always tend to correct itself towards the original path.

"Kol, now go back to the real world. This place is very dangerous. If you don't leave, the dead souls here will try to steal your body" Esther spoke in a firm voice and straight face, before Kol could say anything.

Kol replied in a somewhat tired voice, "Mother! I assure you that no dead spirit, no matter how powerful, can not steal my body.", after a short pause, he continued, "Now then, Do you know where I may find a witch named, Qetsiyah? She had created this Other Side and I am working on something similar, so I wonder whether we could help each other! I mean, she must have descendants that need looking after or some unfinished business.!".

Esther did not know why Kol was so confident, but nevertheless, Kol was a powerful sorcerer in his own right and he knew the dangers. She had been watching over him for more than a century now and she knew that her son was neither boastful nor overly arrogant.

Esther took a sigh of relief and replied, "Alright. Well! If you want to find someone here and don't already know their location, then the conventional methods won't work. You have to imagine the person you want to see, and then, want to be able to see them. Only souls reside in this dimension and for them, the distance is nothing but a concept.".

"There is no need for that. I am already here.", Before Esther could continue, or Kol could ask anything, they were interrupted by a women's voice.

Esther and Kol were startled as they turned their heads in the direction of that voice.

They saw a gorgeous brown-skinned woman, wearing a beautiful dress from another time. Most likely, her dress was from ancient Greece.

------------Scene END-----------